Nineteen years in corporate communications teaches you things that no classroom will.
It teaches you that the most technically brilliant leaders often fail not because of what they know but because of how they communicate it. It teaches you that trust is not built in a single impressive presentation but in the slow, consistent accumulation of words that match actions. And it teaches you that a crisis will come for every leader eventually, and the ones who survive it with their reputation intact are the ones who prepared before it arrived.
Ginikanwa Frank-Durugbor has spent nearly two decades learning these lessons at the highest levels of corporate communications. As Head of Communications, Brand and Events at Lafarge Africa PLC, she has navigated the full spectrum of what leadership communication demands. In this Women’s History Month episode of Lunch with Leaders, she sits down with Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya to share what she has learned, and the conversation is a genuine masterclass.
Here is what every woman in STEM needs to take from it.
Storytelling is one of the most underused tools in a technical leader’s toolkit.
Most women in STEM were trained to lead with data. Present the numbers. Show the evidence. Let the analysis speak. And in the right context, that approach is exactly correct.
But data alone does not move people. It informs them. It does not inspire them, align them, or make them feel connected to a vision they are being asked to give their effort to. That is what storytelling does.
Ginikanwa makes the case for storytelling not as a soft communication nice-to-have but as a practical leadership instrument. A well-placed story simplifies a complex message in a way that no amount of slides can. It builds emotional connection between a leader and their team. And it dramatically increases retention. People forget statistics. They remember stories.
The good news is that you do not need to be a natural storyteller. You need to start small. Think about a personal experience that taught you something real and find the moment in a meeting, a feedback conversation, or a vision-setting session where that story is relevant. The goal is connection, not performance. And connection comes from honesty, not polish.
Trust is built slowly
This is one of the clearest and most practical insights in the entire conversation.
Ginikanwa is direct about what authenticity actually means in a leadership context. It is not about being emotionally open or sharing personal stories in every meeting. It is about the alignment between what you say and what you do, reliably, over time.
Leaders who say one thing in a town hall and do another in a budget meeting erode trust without always realising it. Leaders who communicate clearly in calm periods but go silent when things are uncertain send a signal that transparency is conditional. Teams read both of these patterns quickly and adjust their behaviour accordingly, usually by disengaging.
“Integrity is non-negotiable. And that comes with courage.”
Building trust across diverse, global teams adds another layer to this. Different cultural contexts carry different expectations around communication style, hierarchy, and what counts as directness versus disrespect. Being intentional about your audience, understanding their context, using clear and simple language, and creating genuine two-way feedback loops is not just good practice. It is the difference between a message that lands and one that gets lost entirely.
The AI era makes authenticity more valuable, not less.
There is a temptation in a world flooded with AI-generated content to assume that communication is becoming less personal. Ginikanwa argues the opposite.
When everything can be generated, the thing that cannot be replicated becomes the premium. And the thing that cannot be replicated is you. Your specific perspective., particular way of reading a room, genuine investment in the people you lead and willingness to be vulnerable when the situation calls for it.
Vulnerability, used with intention, is a trust accelerator. It does not mean oversharing or performing struggle. It means being willing to say “I do not have all the answers yet” or “this decision was harder than it looked” when that is true. Leaders who never show any complexity become difficult to trust, because teams know that no leadership journey is as smooth as a curated professional presence suggests.
Authenticity aligned with consistent action is what builds the kind of trust that lasts. And in an era where audiences are increasingly sceptical of polished communication, it is also what makes you memorable.
Nearly an Hour of Communication Masterclass
Ginikanwa covers crisis strategy, personal branding, storytelling, and trust in a conversation that stays practical throughout.
Listen to the full episode of Lunch with Leaders here.
Crisis communication is a leadership test that most people fail to prepare for.
Every organisation will face a crisis at some point. A public failure. A team conflict that becomes visible. A decision that backfires. A situation that demands a response when there is no perfect answer available.
The leaders who handle crisis well almost always have one thing in common. They prepared before the crisis arrived.
Ginikanwa’s framework for crisis communication breaks down into four principles that are worth committing to memory.
Prepare in peacetime. The best time to think through your crisis communication strategy is when you do not need it. What are the scenarios that could affect your organisation or your reputation? Who needs to know what, and in what order? What does your response process look like before the pressure is on?
Move quickly. In a crisis, silence reads as guilt or incompetence. Getting an initial communication out, even when you do not have all the answers yet, signals that you are taking the situation seriously and that you are in control enough to respond.
Lead with empathy. Before you explain, before you justify, before you present the facts, acknowledge the impact. People need to feel that their experience has been heard before they are ready to receive information.
Own the mistake. This is the one most leaders resist. The instinct is to protect, to hedge, to qualify. But owning an error directly and clearly, without deflection, is almost always the fastest path back to credibility. Half-apologies and passive constructions do not land. Direct accountability does.
Personal branding starts before anyone can see it.
Ginikanwa is clear on this point. Before you build a brand, you have to know who you are.
Not who you want to be perceived as. Not what sounds impressive in a LinkedIn bio. Who you actually are. What you value. What you are genuinely good at. Who you want to serve and why. The niche where your specific combination of skills and experience creates something that other people cannot easily replicate.
This kind of self-awareness takes time and honesty. It often requires sitting with questions that feel uncomfortable. What would you do even if nobody was watching? Where does your best thinking come from? What problems do you find yourself returning to even when nobody is asking you to?
The answers to those questions are the raw material of a personal brand that is sustainable because it is true.
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Your niche is not a limitation. It is a signal.
One of the most practically useful pieces of advice in this conversation is about finding and owning your specific niche.
There is a temptation, especially for women in STEM who have built broad expertise across multiple areas, to resist being defined by one thing. To keep the options open. To avoid being boxed in.
But Ginikanwa’s argument is that specificity is what makes you findable, memorable, and valuable to the right people. Trying to be relevant to everyone makes you essential to no one.
Your niche does not mean you only do one thing. It means you are known for something specific. It is the entry point through which people understand what you bring and why they should pay attention to you. Everything else builds from there.
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Visibility requires a channel. Build one deliberately.
Knowing who you are and what you stand for is the foundation. But a brand that exists only in your own head does not open doors.
Ginikanwa practices what she preaches here. Her YouTube channel, 3 Minute Convos, was built on a simple insight. Most people do not have the time or attention for long-form content, but everyone has three minutes. The channel delivers communication and leadership insights in a format that respects that constraint.
The lesson is not that you need a YouTube channel. It is that you need a channel. Some deliberate way of making your thinking visible to the people you want to reach. That might be LinkedIn posts. A newsletter. Speaking at industry events. Contributing to conversations in communities where your ideal audience already gathers.
The format matters less than the consistency. Show up with something useful, reliably, over time. That is how a personal brand becomes something other people trust.
Continuous learning is not optional. It is the price of sustained relevance.
The professional landscape is changing faster than any single credential or skill set can keep up with. Ginikanwa is direct about this. The leaders who stay relevant are the ones who treat learning as an ongoing practice rather than something that happens in formal bursts and then stops.
This means staying curious about your field beyond your current role. Reading widely. Seeking out perspectives that challenge what you already think. Being willing to be a beginner in something new even when you are an expert in something else.
It also means paying attention to the direction the world is moving, not to chase every trend, but to understand which shifts are structural and which are noise. The leaders who anticipate change rather than just respond to it are the ones who get to shape what comes next.
Conclusion
The women who build lasting legacies in their fields are not the ones who arrived and stayed. They are the ones who arrived, built something, and then created conditions for others to arrive behind them.
That might mean mentoring deliberately rather than just when it is convenient. It might mean advocating publicly for women whose work deserves more visibility. It might mean using your communication platform, however large or small, to make space for perspectives that are not currently getting the room they deserve.
The skills Ginikanwa shares in this episode, storytelling, trust-building, crisis communication, personal branding, are powerful individually. But in the hands of a woman who has decided that her rise is not just for her, they become something more.
They become a model. A standard. A signal to every woman watching that this is what leadership actually looks like.
Connect With Ginikanwa Frank-Durugbor
- Email: ginika.durugbor@gmail.com
